Archive for the ‘James V. Martin’ tag

In a recent SIA Flashback, we brought you the story of Captain James T. Kirk V. Martin and his outrageous microcars and three-wheelers. The last three paragraphs seem rather hurried and contain all sorts of quick information about Martin’s efforts to build such a car after World War II, but no detailed information and few photographs.

Only a single working Tri-Car Surburbanette was built and shown at the Universal Travel & Auto Sports Show at Madison Square Garden, New York City, held February 20-27, 1955. There were discussions of two others: one with a transparent panel above the seating area and a second with a removable fabric. There was no time for either one, considering that from concept design to a working car was under 4 months.

Jerry D. Falck, an auto historian who researched in 1988, believes Payne sold interest in Tri-Car to Fairchild Aircraft, and they in turn, were sold to Rohr Industries. Nothing further is known about the Tri-Car Surburbanette.

And from here it gets kinda fuzzy. The SIA article claims that Martin “sold out to Bassons Industries… who modernized the (1954) Stationette with a handsome plastic body.” Jaffe’s photos appear to show that plastic-bodied vehicle, but he only states that Basson developed it through “a joint connection with the Tri-Car group.”

He also doesn’t know the fate of the vehicle. And without a photo of the fiberglass Tri-Car, it’s rather difficult to say definitively whether Bassons built the pictured three-wheeler from the Tri-Car.

Modern Mechanix has a scan from the April 1950 issue of Mechanix Illustrated of the Martin Stationette…

… but doesn’t give much background info. Fortunately, we have the Special Interest Autos archives to fill us in. We have to go way back to SIA #21 (March-April 1974) for a feature article on the history of Captain James V. Martin’s interest in cars.